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  He hums flatly and gives on single nod, both agreeing and confirming. Expensive's his concern for bringing it to table. They'll manage, if it comes to it. They always do. But it's worth considering, first.

  “Jasper's going shutters down; hoping for good, expecting the worst. They'll let us bunk if we beat it there, but nobody's making promises if the dust gets there first.” They'd be gambling on easy roads. “No real word from Ashtap, just one or two voices echoing Jasper, a couple more expecting it to fall apart before it hits.”

  Just like that the round table is just a dialogue. It's not hard to imagine what the others would say anyhow. Assuming he could even get them all to sit for it. He crosses his arms loosely. “Miles okay for a sit still, you think?”

Her hands find her hips, mouth twisting thoughtfully. Dark eyes drift out to the horizon, as it's the focus of her current thoughts. Getting out in front of it might mean an increasingly nomadic existence for up to a week, given the unpredictability of storms. It'd eat into their supplies. They might be able to help someone in the meantime, but is a maybe worth it?

"Moving could be expensive," Jitter volunteers finally as she follows him away from her tinkering. "Have Ashtap or Jasper said anything 'bout it?"

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  Of course they're not here. That'd make it too easy, and mean he'd actually come here for a reason beyond making himself want to- Kobra sighs, short. This is not the last place he can think of, but it's pretty damn close to the bottom. For obvious reasons. That's the only reason he lingers after the no-shaped answer. Trying to think while trying to ignore her attempts at talking him in.

  She'd get more from a rock. At least until the shade of real cracks though. Kobra softens despite that last dig.

  “Not missin',” he confirms readily, flat affect traded for simply unworried. Not missing, just hard to track down today, for whatever reason. Or maybe no reason at all. That's the major issue, really — Kobra doesn't know. And not knowing... he adjusts in place, jacket sitting a little different over his shoulders now. “Could be dodgin' me,” he allows. Unlikely, but not impossible. Even they needed space from each other sometimes. “Jus'...” He digs a fistful of well-worn carbon bits out of his pocket, offering them across. “Throw a line if you hear from 'em, yeah?”

“Who, my favorite canvas?” She shakes her head. “Ain’t been by in a couple days. You see ‘em, let ‘em know we miss ‘em. ‘S always nice, havin’ th’King around.” Her voice is light, but it’s sincere; most ‘joys are on their best behavior with Party Poison around, and it makes things a lot easier on them all.

She twists a section of hair around a finger as she studies Kobra. “You do look a lot like them.” Cos is intimately familiar with Party’s facial structure, since she’s successfully twisted their arm into letting her do their makeup on a few occasions now. “But, god, you got cheekbones t’die for. ‘F y'let me paint yer face, betcha’d pass your brother as my favorite.”

Cosmic’s hand stills. Her voice loses its flirtatious edge, and she sounds more like her sixteen years. “Party’s not, like… missing, right? Just avoidin’ your sour face?” She’s genuinely concerned; Party’s one of her very few friends, and she’d be devastated if anything happened to them.

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oh that sure is a time for it to be.

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@deadasadisco ( Cosmic ) || Shiny!

“If you’re being a gentleman, I may die of shock.”

  He fucking hates this place. Hands crammed in his pockets, shades high over his eyes and darker than damnation, flatter face that an idiot who couldn't steer a bike right, he's got every wall up. Blanker than blank. Nothing to read, nothing to see but nothing on him in here. The way it always is when he has to step through their door. Not the kind of place he could pretend not to be who he is, and not somewhere he wants to be, it's easiest to slam through like bullet through glass. Someone else's mess to sweep up.

  But this one. This one out on their floor like this always puts his teeth tense together. Hard enough that his temple flexes, too. It's a beat before he can find his dullest voice. “You seen my brother t'night?”

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@deadasadisco ( Strike ) || Shiny!

“This place gives me an uncomfortableness.”

  He nods along before she's quite done speaking. “Should do.” He parts from their little flicker-flame fire and steps aside a bit, looking out. He glances back, then points. Long gesture out, drawing attention to a shape faintly visible in the gloom. It won't quite resolve until the sun shows out again, just a darker shadow in a dark night. “That's what's left of the Charlatans' Hammer. We're on her Drive.”

  Bedlam chews on a silence, staring at the not-so-distant shape.

  “She's hard t'see 'til you get real close, even in the sun the shine all bounces off the frame an' hides her like'a reflection but-” he gives an approximate gesture, height and prowess- “that's the rig Nova Nine cracked the wall with. She ran down three exxies b'fore they caught her out. Swarmed her out there, biggest cloud anybody'd seen in the desert. And she took nearly all of 'em with her on her way t'dust — everyone but that last exxie. Captain Ruffles himself. Two whole years b'fore mom'n'dad set him on the Fab.” Probably a big promotion for him, that day, ghosting somebody like Nova. Bedlam scowls. He makes a motion toward the old rig, hidden by the way he's facing, before he returns to the rough camp. “There's enough static around here t'scramble a better babysitter than me, so uh. Don't think too hard on the dark, an' don't go gettin' too far from me, okay pup?”

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i am not writing jet i am not writing jet i am not writing jet i am not-

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⭐️ [ for Kobra. I need some good Venom Brothers feels 😩 ]

Man I had to go hunting for this; each “⭐️” = headcanon about our muses

this is one star but what if I just say several things anyway

hmmmmm so they're fairly close in age i think, around 2-4 years difference, and i also i think they more or less raised each other. one parent out of the picture when they're little (like, Kobra maybe 4 or 5 years old) and then the other parent either couldn't or wouldn't invest in them properly — they had a roof over their head and very little if not nothing else. they lean on each other because that's all they've got to lean on. always has been.

despite the above, i do think there's actually a lot of ways they maybe... feed each other's darkness, sometimes. not intentionally! they're only ever trying to help, still leaning on each other. but in that same sense, kobra in particular enables party an unwise amount. he'll argue sometimes, behind closed doors, and he's got his own thoughts and opinions makes no mistake, but at the end of the day, when it comes to public facing and situations where they're on the move, Kobes is gonna back Party up in whatever they do, whether he agrees with it or not.

...and without jet and ghoul and sunny around, they might actually cross the line from 'wow that's a lot of codependency' into straight up being actively bad for each other. good thing that will never be an issue.

Kobra does, actually, have a handful of secrets from Party. they mainly come from their early years in the desert, and some of the hardships they had trying to establish themselves in the zones. it's nothing big enough to inspire betrayal i think, nothing nefarious- they might even technically know, it's just stuff he doesn't talk about with them. avoids it like 07, actually.

puppy piles. that's the HC.

actually more specifically i think while Kobra does a fair amount of wandering at night (bad sleeper, maybe literal and not just as-an-expression insomniac?) when he's feeling like, physically unwell (sick, injured) he seeks out Party for comfort. curls up next to them. listen he's entitled to a little bit of a baby brother moment now and then okay.

party starts fights, kobra finishes them

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  The car veers sharply and for a second it's relief. Direction and promise. A rope to grab. He'll wrap it around his arm, if he can, tight enough to make it hurt. It's worth it if it means not being able to let go.

  Even without looking Party paint a vivid picture - or pulls it from the back of Kobra's mind, anyway. Distant, dusty night drawing closer as they draw closer to it. Reaching– “Ripped the rest'f my sleeve off,” he returns, agreeing; I remember, “tied it up high as I could get it.” Turned the warped elbow way overhead into a flag, frayed edges fluttering in the wind for conquest. We made it. We're here. “Worth every splinter.”

  He shifts a bit, rolling his shoulders back. Finally, opens his eyes. His head turns with the slide of his attention over to his brother. Conflict crawls across his face, guilt and gratefulness. Fear, and trust. We're here. “D'you ever-” The question stops dead in his mouth. Caught and killed by the keening in his ear that makes him snap his mouth shut. “... Think it's still there?"

It’s hardly a secret; they would follow each other off the very edge of the world. Wherever one went, the other would soon follow. It was like the world refused to let them exist without one another. They were blood after all, brothers. Party gives a gentle hum of acknowledgment before the next question catches them entirely off guard.

It takes them a passing second to respond, “Yea, I remember.” Their brain has to slingshot itself back to recall the details. Between the cold sweats, violent tremors, and sheer exhaustion, it was as if their body was constructed of weighted lead. They’d pushed on by raw determination, despite the enticing lure of sweet rest.

“Sure I could find it.” A genuine smile is flashed in Kobra’s direction before they veer left at a split.

The stars had looked so artificial, small glowing specs in the dark void above their heads. They remember feeling so minuscule, nothing but another grain of sand in comparison. “We’d stopped to take a breather,” Party recalls, voice soft. “There was this funk’y nak’d tree. It had these cagemad limbs, yea?” Their hands come off the steering wheel for a moment, arms contorting and twisting in a rather goofy manner in an attempt to recreate the branches.

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AUSTIN BUTLER and TOM HARDY in THE BIKERIDERS (2023), dir. Jeff Nichols

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kobra coded to me

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"people think i'm big but i'm small" 2 apples tall really

© harleyoquinn92

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Some killjoy commissions.. first request was “party poison wildin” so there they are being annoying while also endangering lives, second request was Ghoul blastin with his mask on

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  “Wanna drive off the edge'f the world,” he says, automatic, gripping the neck of the bottle like he means to shatter it in his hands. And for another tense few seconds the grimace, the tension, continues to build. He grinds his teeth. Rolls his shoulders, driving them back into the seat. Another tense inhale.

  And it passes. He sighs. If he was the type at all, he might apologize. Not even here, though, in this car. Kobra keeps his eyes closed, but he does say-

   “D'you remember the first night?” It's hard even for him. It's not a stretch to imagine it's more difficult for Party. Still there is this... pull. This quality of it. Less a thing, more an idea. “...Can y'find it, you think?” The place they stopped — or the idea of it. The first they'd seen the stars for real, gleaming in the dark of the desert night like nothing in the city could ever aspire to. It's out there somewhere, still. He's sure of it. Waiting in some out of the way nothing place, dust and darkness. Debris of the gone world going by.

  That's where he'll outrun this, today. In a place that's an idea.

Death had unceremoniously chewed and spat all four of them out like a spoiled spoonful of Power Pup. Returning to the land of the living was a fucking doozy, and it's not without its slew of consequences.

Their beloved Widow still smells the same. The faint odor of engine oil, the desert's familiar dry scent, and smoke from countless cigarettes all cling to the car's very interior.

The vague answer provided typically wouldn't shed much light on an explanation, but Party doesn't NEED one. They've never needed one to fully understand. Strands of their scarlet hair are tossed about from the wind that whips through an open window. "Yeah," their head nods faintly in agreement. "I know how that feels." Party unconsciously scratches the scar beneath his chin with one hand. The motion is brief, gone in a blink, before their hand returns to the steering wheel with the other.

Their peripheral vision catches Kobra's shifting expression. The emitted sound is enough to put them further on alert. Like a switch, their older sibling mode is even more engaged. "Ya wanna stare at sky glitter?"

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  Shadows sit under her eyes, shadows and the wilted rainbows of makeup she didn't scrub away. She shivers, sick feeling stuck in her gut— he opens the door, though. Opens the door and lets her back through. She hits him palms first, hands one over the other on his chest as if to stem a wound. A split second later her elbows collapse and she folds into his chest, hiding her face against his heartbeat.

  She knows, generally. Knows it's a dream, and they've been back all this time. She knows that they'll be in their rooms if she goes looking. But she still has to go looking, you see. She has to be sure.

  “Nothin',” she says, muffled under his arm, clinging to his clothes. Learned that from the best. The fact she can't wrestle her half-speaking-half-sobbing into something more nonchalant or at least sharp kind of subtracts from the overall effect. “Can I ...sleep... in here?”

Once upon a time, Ghoul had been a heavy sleeper. A lifetime ago, really, before... everything. It had slipped in stages. His hardest sleeps are naps upright in the diner booths, when the others are nearby but not In his space. Not everything wakes him. He can ignore the bulk of the desert's nighttime sounds, and the general fucking around of the others if they linger out. Coyotes too close prickle at some weird little itch he firmly ignores.

Contact with his door from outside has him jolting awake, hand sliding to his blaster. It's how it always goes, but with the way the handle's rattling? He flicks it to just above a stun level and shoves the barrel down the front of his pants so he's got his hands free. Wise for his cajones? Maybe not, but it's not like he's planning on procreating.

He shoves his feet into his unlaced boots as he swings himself out of bed and trudges toward the door.

"What, assh-" Except the complaint dies there when it's their Sunny on the other side. And she looks rough. "Bitty?" A host of emotions flit across his face before they lock behind a frown and a tattooed arm reaching out to tuck her under and against him. "What happened?"

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@hvndredzones semi-plotted. suffer my wrath.

  Sunny wakes screaming.

  As in her dream so unto her waking, though, the terror at work in her chest doesn't make it into the air. Just rips and tears and runs through her, not one sound for evidence. Something about it being buried, she often thinks (well after, or in between visits from this vivid nightmare, when there's space to do any real thinking) now repeating itself again and again. Silent under the swarm of boots and screeching guns and wailing alarms. Drowned out. Even the only thing she could do, and still too small for them to even hear her. For her to even hear herself.

  She flees her room. Not even bothering for shoes, or a jacket over her tank, or anything sensible at all. They're beyond the worst of the day's heat anyway — and what a miserable, oppressive heat. Not the clear and high and brights that composed the normal but heavy, dragging. Too-still for too many hours. Now, as she scampers across the driveway from one side of the motel to the other, there it is. A perfect peal of thunder out of a darkening sky. It makes her jump.

  She fumbles for the door, but the warped knob doesn't turn. She tries it again, hoping for a fluke. Nothing but resistance.

  “Gh... Gh-!” Two false starts while her breath catches and catches and catches again, incomplete and desperate. Please open the door. Please get up, and open the door. The knob shakes in her hand. Please, please, please. She manages a brittle knock.